Smoke still rises from the scene after Kurdish militants attacked a police checkpoint in Cizre, southeast Turkey, Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, with an explosives-laden truck, killing several police officers and wounding dozens more, according to reports from the state-run Anadolu news agency. The attack struck the checkpoint some 50 meters (yards) from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly-Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria. Turkish authorities have put a temporary ban on distribution ofimages relating to Friday’s Cizre attack within Turkey.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which was the latest in a string of bombings targeting police or military vehicles and facilities. Authorities have blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party,
or PKK, for those attacks. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the attack was a PKK suicide bombing carried out with an explosives-laden truck. He vowed to “destroy the terrorists.”
Turkey sent tanks across the Syrian border following weeks of deadly attacks by the PKK and the Islamic
State group. The operation aims to help Syrian rebels retake Jarablus, a
key IS-held border town, and to contain the expansion of Syrian Kurdish militia who are linked to the PKK.
